Learning from Experience: Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles

Moya, Paula M. L. M. L.

ISBN 10: 0520230140 / ISBN 13: 9780520230149

Published by University of California Press, 2002

About this Item

Seller Inventory # BSM.12NJU

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Learning from Experience: Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520230140
• ISBN 13: 9780520230149
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: very_good

About this title

Synopsis

In Learning from Experience, Paula Moya offers an alternative to some influential philosophical assumptions about identity and experience in contemporary literary theory. Arguing that the texts and lived experiences of subordinated people are rich sources of insight about our society, Moya presents a nuanced universalist justification for identity-based work in ethnic studies.

This strikingly original book provides eloquent analyses of such postmodernist feminists as Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, Norma Alarcón, and Chela Sandoval, and counters the assimilationist proposals of minority neoconservatives such as Shelby Steele and Richard Rodriguez. It advances realist proposals for multicultural education and offers an understanding of the interpretive power of Chicana feminists including Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Helena María Viramontes. Learning from Experience enlarges our concept of identity and offers new ways to situate aspects of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation in discursive and sociopolitical contexts.

About the Author

Paula M. L. Moya is Assistant Professor of English at Stanford University and coeditor of Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism (California, 2000).